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house, and was to say, ‘Sarah, rejoice with me, for I have
seen an elephant!’ would THAT be Terewth?’
Mrs. Snagsby in tears.
‘Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant,
and returning said ‘Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an
eel,’ would THAT be Terewth?’
Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.
‘Or put it, my juvenile friends,’ said Chadband, stimulated
by the sound, ‘that the unnatural parents of this slumbering
heathen—for parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a
doubt—after casting him forth to the wolves and the vul-
tures, and the wild dogs and the young gazelles, and the
serpents, went back to their dwellings and had their pipes,
and their pots, and their flutings and their dancings, and
their malt liquors, and their butcher’s meat and poultry,
would THAT be Terewth?’
Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to
spasms, not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing
one, so that Cook’s Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Final-
ly, becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow
staircase like a grand piano. After unspeakable suffering,
productive of the utmost consternation, she is pronounced,
by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though
much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby,
trampled and crushed in the piano-forte removal, and ex-
tremely timid and feeble, ventures to come out from behind
the door in the drawing-room.
All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he
woke up, ever picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his

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